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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Xichang, China by TravelPod blogger Mrconfused titled “The latest in minority fashion” Mrconfused’s travel blog entry: “Fearing the temporary lack of electricity at Sim’s and the snow(!) of Chengdu, I decided to take a short trip to the south of the province with Greg, a fellow long-term guest of Sim’s and a fluent Mandarin speaker. This use of this was almost immediately obvious, as, on arrival in Xichang at 3 in the morning, he managed to negotiate us a free night in our chosen guest house. Xichang is a small provincial town and really quite unexceptional, though the small, attractively decrepit old town area of ramshackle buildings, cheap baijiu shops (3.5 kuai for half a liter!) and toothless old ladies trying to show us places to drink, and general, curious yet friendly atmosphere of a town not inundated with tourists, meant that it wasn’t an unpleasant place to spend a few nights. Our reason for coming here, though, wasn’t Xichang itself, but the Yi minority villages of the area. Interestingly, many signs in Xichang were posted in both Chinese characters and Yi ideograms, which seemed almost mathematical in appearance. It isn’t overly common to see such regard for local minorities, though there did seem to be a sizable Yi presence within the town. The Yi are in fact the fourth largest minority in China, mostly concentrated in Yunnan province (Xichang is far in the south of Sichuan, very close to the provincial …
